Nation's classrooms overcrowded

Posted: Friday, June 23, 2000

By Anjetta McQueenAssociated Press

WASHINGTON -- Parents in Murfreesboro, Tenn., don't need a study to tell them their schools are overcrowded.

''There are about 15 portables in the school yard; kids are eating in the hallway, sitting cross-legged on the floor,'' said Stacey Borasky, a parent who led the charge for a new school to ease conditions at Walter Hill Elementary School.

The school is swelling with 1,096 K-8 pupils -- nearly 200 more than were enrolled seven years ago. ''It's an unhealthy environment,'' Borasky said. ''We pack them into the building like sardines.''

More than one-fifth of the nation's schools have more students than they were built to serve, the Education Department said Thursday in a report suggesting that overcrowding and crumbling buildings go hand in hand.

In 1999, the study said, 17,400 U.S. schoolhouses (or 22 percent) were at least 6 percent over capacity, which the department deems overcrowded. Two-thirds of these schools, which enroll nearly 18 million children, had roofs, plumbing and other building features that needed constant maintenance, violated building codes, or required outright replacement, the study said.

The report was released as President Clinton pushed for congressional approval of his $1.3 billion emergency school-repair bill.

''Rising enrollments and years of deferred maintenance have taken a serious toll, jeopardizing our children's health and the quality of their education,'' Clinton said as the Senate opened debate on fiscal 2001 education spending.

Republicans oppose Clinton's wish to set aside grants and loans to fix 5,000 of the worst schools each year. They plan, instead, to put the construction money into a pot with other programs.

''Parents have a right to expect that their children go to schools that are in good condition,'' said Education Secretary Richard Riley, saying that although school repair is a local issue, voters support the federal help.

But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who heads the Appropriations Committee's panel that oversees education spending, said, ''We're prepared to take to the American people the basic concept that if school systems do not need additional buildings, they ought to be able to use their share for something else.''

The spending fight has focused on overall school repair: leaking roofs, flooding toilets and collapsing walls that have dogged districts saddled with schoolhouses averaging 40 years old. But Thursday's report documented a trend that paralleled the aging of schools: record public school enrollment overcrowding and increasing wear and tear on buildings.

The report said:

53 percent of overcrowded schools reported problems with heating and other ventilation systems, compared with 39 percent of schools with normal capacity.

36 percent of all schools used portable classroom trailers.

20 percent of all schools held classes elsewhere such as in the gym or the lunchroom.

8 percent of all schools -- 6,200 buildings -- were severely overcrowded, enrolling 25 percent more children than they were built to hold.

The first-ever survey asked 903 public schools last year about building space and the condition of roofs, plumbing, heating, ventilation and other features.

The margin of error for all schools was plus or minus 0.9 of a percentage point.

Overcrowded schools were typically large elementary schools in poor, minority neighborhoods in the South and West, the report said.